The footbridge nobody climbs

On a wide road in Imbaba, people cross through the traffic a short walk from a footbridge built for exactly that crossing.

The usual response is another sign. Bigger letters, a brighter colour, a warning about fines. After that, perhaps a second sign beside the first. People keep crossing underneath the bridge, past every one of them.

Look at the bridge and the reason is obvious. The stairs are steep and long. There is no shade at the top, and by midday in summer the railing is too hot to hold. The buses stop on the road itself, nowhere near the foot of the steps. Everything about the place tells a tired person carrying shopping to walk straight across, and a sign cannot win an argument against everything about a place.

The same reflex shows up wherever something is not working. Customers ignore the message, so it gets repeated more often. The pack disappears on the shelf, so the logo grows. Nobody reads the leaflet, so the next one is printed in red. It feels like effort. Mostly it is a way of dodging the harder question, which is why the situation keeps producing the behaviour nobody wants.

Turning up the volume is the lazy choice, because it asks nothing of the thing that is broken. Move the bus stop to the steps. Put a roof over the bridge. Make the right path the easy one.

When the design is doing the work, the sign hardly needs to say anything at all.